Latched (16:58)
Dread Central; Dust; Films Short; IMDb; Justin Harding; Vimeo; YouTube

This 2017 short film was presented by Alter in 2018.

A woman takes her toddler with her to a cabin in the woods, just off a lake (or on an island, or something). She's a choreographer who has been offered a job working with a dance company apparently called "Latched" (as seen on a flyer she shows the old man who lives next door). We never see the dance company or anything, but its name seems to be the only explanation, as far as I can tell, for the title of this short film. So I don't really care for the title, I'd prefer something that has more to do with the actual story, but I guess it doesn't matter. Anyway, one day the toddler finds a small skeleton of some creature inside a tree. The woman takes pictures of it and takes the skeleton to show her neighbor, who says it's a bat. But it pretty clearly was actually a fairy. Anyway, she throws the skeleton in the trash, but some milk spills on it. Later, we see a creature stalking the woman and her toddler. It's human-sized, unlike the skeleton, which doesn't really make sense to me since presumably the milk brought it back to life, but whatever. Let's just assume fairies can change size. It's pretty scary, and it eventually kidnaps the toddler, so the mother has to go out looking for him.

That's all I want to say about the plot, in fact I feel like I've said too much. But while there are little things about it that vaguely bothered me, on the whole I thought it was good. There aren't enough scary fairy movies, so this one was welcome. (Even if I do tend to prefer good fairies, the bad ones are more old school, and they definitely have their place in pop culture.) It's a well-made, out of the ordinary short film, and I'm glad to have seen it.